The Beirut port silos on Tuesday morning. (L'Orient Today/Mohammed Yassin)
BEIRUT — The last remaining eight silos of the Beirut port silos’ northern block collapsed Tuesday morning, sending up a cloud of dust, L’Orient Today’s correspondent at the scene confirmed, leaving behind the southern block consisting of 12 silos believed to be stable.
Here’s what we know:
• Experts had said that the collapse of the northern block, where fermented grains had been ablaze for over a month, was “inevitable,” as the structure was beyond repair following the blast on Aug. 4, 2020.
• Previously, eight silos from the northern block had collapsed — four fell on July 31 and another four on Aug. 4, on the second anniversary of the Beirut explosion.
• Caretaker Public Works Minister Ali Hamieh had said over the weekend that the fall of another section of the northern bloc of silos at the Beirut port was "expected" and that "security services are following up on the matter on the ground, and all employees have been evacuated from the vicinity of the port silos, including the civil defense centers and the fire brigade." A spokesperson for the minister could not provide any information on the latest collapse Monday.
• During a meeting on Wednesday between caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, caretaker Environment Minister Nasser Yassin and Forces of Change MPs Najat Aoun Saliba and Melhem Khalaf, officials made a decision to demolish only the already collapsing northern block of the grain silos but preserve the more stable southern side, in addition to extinguishing the fire at the silos that has been ablaze for more than a month. However, no demolition took place.
• A delegation of the families of the victims of the Aug. 4, 2022 port blast met Saliba and Khalaf on Saturday, where they "stressed the need for the Prime Minister’s decisions to be accompanied by an urgent implementation before it is too late," they said in a statement, adding that "the executive authority alone bears the responsibility for all the failures in this file... if it does not act now and immediately in order to preserve the rest of the silos, especially on the southern side."